Suit: 1 million state voters’ ballots may not be secret

About one million voters in Washington state have used ballots that contained unique bar code identifiers, a violation of the state Constitution’s guarantee of “absolute” ballot secrecy, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The suit against Secretary of State Sam Reed was filed directly in the state Supreme Court and seeks an injunction to prohibit the use of such ballots. The suit was brought by the Green Party of San Juan County and four voters.

“Over a million voters have markings on their ballots that are unique to their ballot,” said Seattle attorney Knoll Lowney, who is representing the plaintiffs. “In many counties there is a linkage being made between the ballot and the voter identification, so there is a potential link between the voted ballot and the person who voted it.”

Lowney says Reed’s office has led the introduction and proliferation in most Washington counties of ballot IDs by activating an option of the Hart Intercivic voting system. Reed has given money to counties to help implement the VoteHere ballot tracking system, which links the unique ballot ID with the voter’s ID, according to the lawsuit.

King County prohibited ballot identifiers because of secrecy concerns, Lowney said.

“We’re told we can rely on a private corporation to protect the secrcy of the ballot and we shouldn’t have to rely on a private corporation to do that,” he said.

For a list of counties Lowney says is affixing unique bar codes to individual ballots and counties using a mail in ballot tracker click here.

UPDATE

State Elections Director Nick Handy said the claims of privacy violations are “simply not true.”

“It is not possible in Washington to trace any ballot back to the individual voter,” Handy said in a statement.

“The state Constitution and the laws of Washington vigilantly protect the privacy of voters, and this office and our Legislature have made it very clear that no election official in the state may trace a ballot back to how an individual person voted. The basic underlying premise of the lawsuit is just wrong. Ballots do have various bar codes and other markings on them to allow the tabulation equipment to process the ballot properly and to guard against ballots being fed through more than once … We expect to prevail if this matter is actually heard by the Supreme Court.”